24 July 2014

Sometimes things in RL happen which make SL seem pretty irrelevant. Over the weekend one of those happened:
A friend is in trouble and in order to help her we have decided to let the sim hibernate for 2 months (or as long as needed) and use the money to support her instead.

Breaking down the place and restoring it later on is really just an inconvenience compared to the good we can do with helping our friend - so the decision wasn't really hard for us.

We will close the sim in the next days, but Shoregate will return! All proud and dirty and zombie-infested as we know and love it! Its just a matter of time.

We'll be back!

P.S.
The closing will not affect construction work on the Prometheus-Class Refit. I will keep you informed about the new location of the exhibit.

21 July 2014

The building phase on the refitted Prometheus is finished now - at least to 99%. I might change a few things and a few things want to be added, but compared to the sheer bulk of the ship its just small modifications.

So whats next? Textures! Over the last days I did some extensive testing of SL's advanced lighting model - usually creating my own material layers from the textures. You can see how nicely metallic the ship's hull reflects light now. Since the ship will have various texture-options it is of course important to make sure that every variant will meet the standards, without looking too polishes or too bumpy.

After texturing is finished, scripts will follow. The aim there is allowing the user to operate the ship's many functions by a logic and intuitive menu without a Doctor's degree or having studied the manual.

Yes, thats me dancing on its roof! A special thank you to my friends (too many to name them all really) who gave me lots of input during the whole process of building - your support is highly apprechiated!

14 July 2014

While the Germans were playing for the world cup I was doing something productive (ok, and watched the game a bit too - quite a thriller!) and did some more work on the refitted Prometheus. The progress looks massive over the last days, but the actual work was done over weeks (and weeks and more weeks). Now its just uploading, assembling, texturing, testing and fixing and uploading again.

Germany may have became world champion, but the really important thing for me that night was seeing the Prometheus getting shape. Its a champion by its own!

As mentioned in my previous post the ship is docked at the Shoregate-harbor which makes finally its debut as airship-port. During its construction ship is open for exploration - and afterwards too!

10 July 2014

How long I've been waiting for this moment! After countless hours, tests, designing and re-designing (things simply doesn't always work out as planned) - my big "Prometheus-Class Refit"-Project is now close be finished!

I knew it would be a hard piece of work. My experience with building the Daedalus showed me that building large-dimensioned, curved mesh structures isn't exactly a simple task.
Actually it was quite megalomaniac, nuts, insane ambitios to do it. And indeed, building it demanded a lot of patience from me.
Well I kept hanging on. With some interruptions spent on building things I wanted to have done for quite a while now. You simply need to get your mind free from time to time.

What you see now on these charming little pictures is the Prometheus as I did envision it right away. A huge, but at the same time pretty sleek and elegant vessel. There are countless things you simply can't do with prims and building the original about a year ago taught me the lesson that if I wanted to get ahead with building, I had to do the step and make meshes.

The refitted Prometheus is the result of my experiences in building more and more complex (and larger) structures. I started with my Steampunk Grammophone about a year ago. A very good project to learn the foundation of creating shapes, UV-mapps and all these things. Then I went on building more and more complex things like the Kestrel Biplane and eventually the already pretty big Daedalus-Class Airship. Every build was a challenge on its own and I did learn a lot from each.

Also building in large sizes means furthermost that every little detail counts. Everything will be enlarged and the slightest blunder will be visible eventually. There is very, very little tolerance for cheating, believe me.
The happier am I that I did succeed with my quite ambitious goal of building not only a very decent looking ship, but also one which has a very reasonable Primcount. The Prometheus as you see it on the pictures has a land impact of less than 60! Of course this number will grow with more elements added, but I think 60 for a body shell of this scale is already a nice landmark!
Speaking of size: The ship got its name from the titan of Greek mythology, who wasn't only pretty... titanic - but also a bright and inspirational mind. A real inventor, who taught the humans how to use fire. If you ask me its quite a fitting name for a - as I already said - quite ambitioned project I learned a lot from.

Oh, and a word about its design: It has definitely a stronger bias towards Dieselpunk now (just look at these fins!), which I find quite suiting to my Airplane designs. I will however include a more steampunk-oriented variant too. The ship will be quite customizable with different texture- and layout-options, including a glamorous ballroom-variant!

The next days will see further improvements on the mesh (some things you can't see before you haven't rezzed your build inworld and stepped into it) and uploading and adding of the rest of the ship's parts.
I set up a construction-site at Shoregate where I'm assembling it. Yes, it looks a bit like the space-dock in Star Trek where they did refit Kirk's Enterprise. No, thats not a concidence.
Be welcome to visit the site, but keep in mind its still work-in-progress: I don't garantee for your safety from falling polygons, also the textures at some parts still need to dry, so be careful what to touch!

As usual I will keep you updated about my progress on this blog. Hell, I can't wait to see this thing in all its gorgeousness!